Our Tax System is BROKEN! Spreading Tax Dollars and Jeopardizing Safety

Here is a  little different side of the Fair Tax,  but it follows in the line of our tax dollars.  I think sometimes we need to know certain stories  from people we don’t hear from often, but are the vital part of the life blood of our economy.   Truck drivers transport and deliver products and commodities so we can enjoy the leisure of  getting them from the stores at our convenience.  I know first hand as I spent 28 years in the trucking business in different forms. I never was a student,  but I was influenced by the government involvement in the trucking industry.

Desiree, a single young woman trucker is now seeing all the ins and outs of  the trucking industry.  Another industry that has become much like our economy -  in total disarray .   This is Desiree’s Story for how the government is wasting our tax dollars – at the cost of our safety.

This is her own words:
“ I would not have survived this 1st year as a Student Trucker because it is set up for FAILURE to generate MORE STUDENTS under government programs.

I share my story in hopes we can bridge communication between our very different worlds and start making changes that benefit all of us

I am going to be driving this morning but I will pass this info along as much as I can manage today on breaks.

I understand the trend began with JB Hunt, understandably with the history of the Railroad Monopoly. Over the past 10 years during the Economic Boom we Americans have blindly followed our greed for cheap goods & driven our jobs overseas.

We got lazy & hungry and 3rd world countries & immigrants were willing & able to do our jobs while we sat on our porches enjoying the leisure time. I believe with some digging into Department of Labor & Statistics Data and Department of Education funding we can see the disparity between how much money is being spent to train Truck Drivers & how many actually become Truck Drivers. The churning out is why there is a false shortage 125% cited by Allen Smith’s Truth About Trucking.  The Student Loans available to retrain workers were given hand over fist until the stock market tumbled and now government loans are not so easy to get. That is the evidence that many of these Large Student Trucking Operations are fumbling right now. The list of tax credits ranging from “Welfare to Work”,  lots of Affirmative Action, immigrant programs , reintroducing former felons to workplace.  I personally do not know the dollar amount of the government subsidies to retrain a displaced worker through “workforce” & other qualifying programs but I’ve heard it is about $10,000 per student.  Therefore 1 student who falls also in the fore-mentioned tax credit categories is a revenue right out of 3 weeks at a CDL Mill. The companies pay commissions to the recruiters & schools & anyone else who steers students into their waiting arms. Then the company throws them on a truck with minimal guidance to work as a team at .14 cents a mile.  The trend now is to require Haz-Mat endorsements right away. This is OUTRAGEOUS. This is a serious matter. The accident rate of Student Truckers is very high due to the manner they are thrown on the open highways. States need to re-evaluate giving these endorsements to people without knowing if they will survive their first few months driving. Reputable Companies require at least 1-2 years experience to drive for them, so why then are Students with no experience at all preferred carriers of Haz-Mat? Cheap Labor! The Department of Transportation oversees this stuff don’t they? When you offset the Student training $ & credits against the cheap labor provided by them and track the time frame when the company no longer has use for that student, nor cares for their ultimate success in the Trucking Industry, a very ugly picture of “Indentured Servitude in America” emerges. Most certainly we understand Trucking cannot be shipped overseas but it is still being outsourced to the people who have no voice. We outsource to countries with no labor laws so we don’t have to see it in our own backyards. We all have a hand in what is happening in this country & we all need to get ourselves together to work our way out of it. Denial has been a large part, but seeing another corporate scandal and bribery case should hopefully spur people to see our Government is broken & if we don’t fix it others will. For a lot cheaper.

Truckers have little $ to even eat & send home to family, so anything that is FREE makes the difference. Here is what the government is doing to the drivers “ Discussion on the issue of Forced Per Diem.

Let me add one thing to Desiree’s story, so you can understand one of some many issues that was involved to the trucking industry and the government.  This is one of the many areas that Fair Tax would make a difference.

I can attest to “hiring” immigrants  at docks of warehouse we unloaded. We were told to get social security numbers from these immigrants. Of course, we all know this is a joke. They are illegal  immigrants and you think they have social security number. They would give us a false social security number and there is nothing we can do about it. Hundreds of thousands of “illegal immigrants“ and “welfare people” who collect food stamps are working “underground” at an average of $500 a day. Yes they collect food stamp from American Tax payers and the trucking industry is paying them more than average American Worker.  These ‘illegals” are not paying taxes – it is all money under-the-table.  These cost are embedded in the cost of the product,  just like capital gains or corporate taxes, that we the taxpayers pay when we purchase the product.  We all know the trucking industry can not be moved to overseas like some of our industries have. This is how the government is gaining control of the very industry that it the bloodline of the economy. I wanted to bring forward an industry that is affecting all of us and how it effects millions of American Workers from companies, to drivers, to employees and to the consumers.   An industry we need to hear about that seem to be hidden from American Taxpayer.

Thank you Desiree for coming forward and telling your story we would never hear about. Please keep safe and trucking, we will do all we can to help you, the American Worker!

Charlie Prochaska
Volunteer Community Coordinator
FairTaxSOWEGA